1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to the field of computer networks, and, in particular, to the connection between a user client device and a content server. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to an improved method and system for accessing secure connection data by establishing a secure port connection between a client device and a secure content server through an intermediary proxy machine.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet comprises a vast network of heterogenous computers and subnetworks all communicating together to allow for global exchange of information. The World Wide Web (WWW) is one of the more popular information services on the Internet. The WWW uses browser software to decipher HyperText links to other documents or files located on remote computers, all of which are connected to the Internet. Browsers provide a user-friendly interface that allows users to easily navigate from site to site or file to file around the Internet. Using a browser, a user can access information in the form of text, audio, video, still pictures and related multimedia stored on remote computers or content servers.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the Internet and other devices that may be used to access the Internet. A client device 10, such as a desktop computer, laptop computer, personal digital assistant (PDA), onboard vehicle computer, cellular telephone, etc., sends a request for a Web site, typically under the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) 12. ISP 12 establishes a link to an Internet 14, which then passes the HTTP request to a content server 16. This request is forwarded to a content provider 18 that is typically a web page addressed by a Uniform Resource Indicator (URI) such as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
The response from client device 16 is typically in the language of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) that is the standard language for creating documents on the World Wide Web (WWW). HTML defines the structure and layout of a web document by using a variety of tag commands inserted in the document to specify how the document, or portion of the document, should be formatted. The response from content provider 18, is routed back through content server 16, Internet 14, and ISP 12 to client device 10.
The user of client device 10 may send a request to a secure server, which is a content server 16 that supports any of the major security protocols that encrypt and decrypt messages to protect them against third-party tampering. For example, a user making a purchase over the Internet would want information regarding credit card numbers and other financial details to be inaccessible to outside hackers. A typical protocol for such a connection is the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, which uses a public key. A key is typically a table needed to decipher any coded data, and is accessed only by providing the proper password, which is typically user defined. By convention, web pages that require an SSL connection start with the URL address of “https:” instead of “http:”. It is understood that the socket of an SSL is typically a software object, not a physical component of a computer system.
One reason for secure connections to be used is so that persistent state data (persistent client state data), which is more commonly known as an Internet “cookie,” may be securely sent back to the user of client device 10. Stored in the cookie will be confidential information for the user such as credit card numbers, past purchases made from a specific content provider, etc. The cookie is typically in a protocol header message given to the client web browser, such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, by a web server, which is a computer that delivers web pages from the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) identified content provider request by the user. The protocol header consists of a string of characters (cookie content) that is inserted by a web server operated by an Internet content provider (ICP) into the random access memory (RAM) of the user's computer (client) while the user is operating a browser (application program) to access web pages. Cookies that have been sent by an ICP are held in the RAM of the user's computer while the user is communicating with the ICP. The cookies are then stored on the hard drive of the user's computer if their lifetime is longer than the time the user spends at the ICP's Web site.
Secure connections in the prior art between content provider 18 and client device 10, as depicted in FIG. 1, establish the requirement that the connection be inaccessible to any third party. Therefore, any cookies for a specific content provider for a specific user of client device 10 are typically stored on the client device 10 presently being used. If the user should then go to a different client device 10, such as his laptop or another public computer terminal, the user would not have access to the cookies that were stored in the user's client device 10 that established the original secure connection with content provider 18. The user would have to establish a secure connection between the new client device and content provider 18, and set up a new cookie file in the new client device.
Another problem found in the prior art is in the process of transcoding content from the content provider 18 to client device 10. Typically, a response from a web page is conventionally formatted via standard page description language such as HTML, which contains text and can reference graphics, sound, animation and video data. If the client device is a wireless device that requires content to be received in the wireless application protocol (WAP), such content would need to be transcoded from HTML into WAP. However, since there is a secure connection between content provider 18 and client device 10, the transcoder cannot intervene and the content will be conveyed back to client device 10 in an unreadable format.
It should therefore be apparent that there exists a need for a method that will allow for intervention of data being delivered across secure Internet connections. It would further be desirable to devise a computer program product wherein such a method may be performed on a computer system. In addition, it would be desirable to devise a proxy machine having the ability to allow data being transmitted across secure Internet connections to be captured for transcoding or other manipulation.